


Entanglement

by Questioning_Silence



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Slow Burn, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26005459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Questioning_Silence/pseuds/Questioning_Silence
Summary: Aka the Slibbs AU that no one asked for, in which misanthropic Undead Gibbs is about to get his world rocked.Inspired by the absolutely delightful indie film Only Lovers Left Alive starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston.  You don’t need to have watched the movie to understand this story – though I highly recommend the film on its own merit.  You just have to know that it's... a story about a vampire living in the modern world.
Relationships: Jethro Gibbs/Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

_Early 2000s, New York, USA_

_Week One_

He woke into the staleness of the morning, his foul mood of the previous night wrapped around him more tightly than his luxurious 600-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. It was still dark outside, the streetlights mixing with the dull midwinter-grey that preceded dawn in New York City.

He cast a wary eye at the antique wall clock, fully expecting to be disappointed and gratified to find himself correct: It was not even a quarter past four in the morning. A full day stretched ahead of him, some eighty thousands of seconds to tick slowly into the past before he might realistically be released to sleep once more.

Stumping over to the bathroom, he pulled out his straight razor from the mirrored cupboard and proceeded to shave the faint stubble from his jawline, the bits of greyed hair forming a thin layer of grime in the basin of the porcelain sink.

His gaze met his own in the mirror, then, and he stared it down levelly. The passage of time showed more clearly on his face than he remembered it having done before, the faint scar at his temple pulling his skin tighter just beyond his left eye. A token of a more violent era. He scowled at the view, giving his reflection one more parting glare before returning to his room, dressing himself impeccably in a tailored deep grey suit complete with cravat and pocket square. Buttoning up his long wool overcoat and wrapping his fingers around the head of his silver-knobbed oak cane, he headed for the door.

His mood did not improve by the time he left his third-floor Brooklyn walk-up, striding down the streets with a purpose that was not matched by the twenty-somethings in his way, faces inclined down to their phones in the pre-morning darkness, clutching the same ubiquitous plastic coffee cups with the smiling mermaid on the side. He wondered if he would ever be able to accustom himself to the excesses of this age, the detritus of plastic piling up in every spare corner of the planet.

It was a brisk morning, and the office buildings around him funneled the wind into the same path, blasting its way down the street without mercy.

He slowed for a moment and glanced down, intent on retrieving a pair of fine leather gloves from the breast pocket of his overcoat, when he was suddenly jostled by a thirty-something man who had trodden onto him from behind. He stumbled for a moment, the man behind him having nearly stepped one of the heels of his shoes off of his feet.

The other man gave a noise of long-suffering irritation and side-stepped him sharply, attempting to blow past with a murmured “ _Move,_ old man,” under his breath.

His own fingers flexed, a muscle-memory that once rage had been enough to rouse him to action, to the spark of emotion that the years had all but erased. Instead, he glared at the man, allowing just a hint of _otherness_ to cross his face. The man blanched, picking up his pace as he scurried away as Gibbs watched without a modicum of interest.

Humans had no real reason to fear him. The stories had gotten some of it right. An abnormally long life was the trademark of his kind, and he’d long ago acquired a taste for O-negative. And indeed, he supposed, a stake through the heart might very well kill him just as it would any other man.

But most of the legends were wrong – most conspicuously, that a ravenous desire to consume human blood motivated his every action (though in the absence of this sole source of nutrition, he would starve); that sunlight would scorch off his flesh (though it was deeply uncomfortable, instantly blistering open any exposed skin); or that he would turn into a bat at night (he had no idea where that one had originated, and he particularly disliked it.)

But humans also had no real reason to like him. And that, frankly, was how he preferred it.

\--------------

As he approached the Manhattan high-rise, the shining glass doors were quickly pressed open from the inside by a red-coated doorman who nodded politely but said nothing. Small talk, the door staff had years-ago learned, was not tolerated by this eccentric yet impeccably-dressed gentleman.

With a faint expression of distaste, he retrieved his plastic ID badge and pressed it to the security turnstile, watching the lighted blue pixels arrange to authenticate his access.

_J. Gibbs IV, Esq._

The fourth, _indeed._ Of all the modern indignities, paperwork was by far the worst.

As the beaten sheet metal doors of the elevator opened and closed around him, rocketing him up 60 floors, Gibbs indulged himself in a moment of reminiscing.

There had certain been, in his long experience, a human obsession with categorization and labeling. But the challenge, he reflected soberly, was the increasing level of scrutiny dedicated to this process. It was becoming quite difficult to find individuals of high skill, able to provide him with the identity documents he needed in order to secure housing, employment, proof of education... 

Digitization was started to prove far more of an existential threat than any farmer with a pitchfork and lighted torch ever could.

Well, digitization and the concept of the “open office,” he mused, as he entered the still-dark office suite that would, within a few hours, be populated by the incessant chatter of paralegals, lawyers, interns, and administrative staff; the constant churning of printers and copiers; the ringing of phones and pinging of texts on mobile devices that no one had the courtesy to silence. He stepped into his private office – a condition of his being willing to work there – and pressed the door firmly closed.

With a sigh, he hung his coat neatly upon the door hook, pulled open a thick stack of case files on his mahogany desk, and settled in to read.

The hours he’d so dreaded in the morning passed smoothly along as he lost himself in his work, fingers turning over crisp pages. Let others spend whole years of their short lives squinting at blue-light screens – he’d stick to the printed word.

_Brrrringggggg! Brrrringggggg!_

He’d recently relented and allowed the firm’s IT team to replace his beautiful yet at that point hopelessly-broken 1950s rotary phone with one of their standard desktop models.  Now, fingertips hesitating over the myriad of buttons, he patently, passionately, regretted the moment of weakness.

“Heya, Jethro!”

In the privacy of his own office, Gibbs felt his lip curl. The voice was all too easily discernible. “Pete,” he acknowledged reluctantly, a moment too late for the acknowledgement to be anything other than sullen in the face of this unexpected call by the firm’s managing partner.

“Glad I caught you at your desk. I have a new case for you. A really interesting one.”

Unwilling to take the bait, Gibbs remained silent.

“A class action lawsuit against a healthcare company that defrauded several hundred senior citizens out of their life savings.”

“Interesting indeed that you would think of me on this one.”

“It’s a quick, clean pro-bono case. Great team and it’s pretty far along, actually, in terms of casework and witness testimonies. You’ll be over and done in a few months.”

“I see.” His voice insinuated clearly enough that he didn’t. “My hands are quite full with the Tri-State Antitrust.”

“Jethro, you gotta get your _pro bono_ in before the end of the calendar year. I’ve told you before, we run this firm fully in compliance with the ABA’s ethical guidelines, including their recommended minimums for volunteer hours.”

His voice was firm, which, reflected Gibbs, leaning back slightly in his chair, presented a problem. Pete seemed uncharacteristically set on this. An excellent judge of character far more by experience than innate skill, Gibbs felt certain the other man would not bend.

He could walk, he supposed. After fifteen years at the firm – and having given his age as “60” upon joining – he was hitting the far end of believable by all accounts. To remain was to put off the inevitable. But the idea of leaving and starting anew was, at this point, to lose his one reason for living in the person of Aloysius Bernard Von Graefe.

“Very well,” he gritted out, pressing the phone harshly back into the receiver.

Gibbs had first met Aloysius when he himself was just turning to the legal profession, having decided at some point in the fifteenth century that a life by the sword was starting to be a bit much for his knees. And frankly, it was simply indecorous at his age. Heaven forbid he lose an eye and find himself forced to wear a patch for the next millennium.

Aloysius was already then an expert in canon law, gallivanting around Europe offering legal services to men of repute who, for a substantial fee, could rely on Aloysius to sway crowd and judge alike. His loquacity was legendary even then.

Perhaps the fame was well-deserved. Aloysius was a real Cicero – in fact, Gibbs had his suspicions on that point, though of course impossible to prove – and having gone head-to-head with Gibbs in the courtroom on no fewer than seven occasions in the last decade, had bested him on four of those seven instances. They were rapidly hurtling toward their eighth confrontation now – a decidedly cookie-cutter anti-trust case between two mega-corporations – but it had promise to even the score. And he was running out of time to do more than that before he would need to move on and start his life afresh.

He spared a glance for the clock on the wall. 9:30pm. Long past dark outside. He might as well leave. Aloysius could wait. In fact, there was nothing that couldn’t wait in his world.


	2. Chapter 2

_Week Two_

He woke slowly the next morning, casting a baleful eye at the clock on the wall. Half past four, this time. His lips pressed flat, but he stood up to begin the day, knowing he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. There was just so much _time_ in a day, these days. He rose, then, tucking his expensive sheets smoothly into the mattress with the military precision of his far-gone youth, then washed, shaved, dressed, and headed for the office. His next courtroom reckoning with Aloysius was just under five more months away.

The sudden rap on the office door was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. He frowned, slightly, failing to recall more than a handful of instances in the last decade in which someone had taken the initiative to knock on his door, let alone before – he checked his wristwatch – 7:30am.

Considering that the unwanted visitor might go away if given sufficient time to repent their decision, he waited. The knock repeated itself, and this time more insistently than the last.

“Enter,” he said coldly.

The knock was repeated a third time.

He rose, irrationally angry and happy to be so. He crossed the room to fling the door open, “Yes?” he found himself demanding of a two-foot stack of files that blocked out the entire upper body of the person standing before him.

“About time,” a woman’s voice came from behind the stack, not altogether unkindly, “These are heavy.” 

The stack started to move into his office as if of its own accord, and he backed up automatically, arms reaching out to take the top half of the files himself. There was no intent of courtesy in the gesture – he had no desire to draw out this interlude by allowing the papers in the files to spill all out across the floor.

“Good morning, Jethro” the woman offered, dark brown eyes meeting his over the now much smaller stack of files in her hands. 

His eyes narrowed slightly in faint recognition. He’d seen her around, if he wasn’t mistaken… Many times over the past few years, he’d left the office in the evening to find her at a back desk: the only source of light in the dark office a halo around her silhouette as she worked into the late hours of the night. He’d – grudgingly – respected that.

But today, suddenly he found himself mesmerized by the lock of wavy blond hair that stranded across her cheek. He was more than startled to realize that, if not for the files in both of his hands, his fingers might have lifted to push the strand out of her face and press it behind her ear. 

She met his gaze, still standing in the doorway, and cocked her head slightly. He’d not stepped aside to allow her to enter. He did so now, mutely.

She smiled faintly, crossed the room, and dropped her files on his mahogany desk without an invitation, turning back to him, tilted slightly against the desk behind her with her hands wrapping around the near edge of the wood. Insufferable. 

Something jumped in his gut. “Make yourself at home,” he covered his confusion with coldness.

She didn’t seem perturbed by his bad attitude.

“Pete says you’ll be working with me on the Maddox case? Welcome to the team.” 

He realized that he was still standing in the door of his own office with half her stack of files. He remained in place. She wouldn’t be here long.

“How shall we divide up the work?” She cut straight to the chase when he didn’t respond. Her professional smile didn’t reach her eyes.

He eyed her coolly, “I’m busy,” he said flatly, a clear dismissal.

“So am I.”

When he didn’t respond again, she continued “Pleadings are through. This,” and here she gestured to the stack on the desk beside her, “is everything we have so far. We’re about to start on discovery with a whole mess of the documents the defendants have sent along.”

“So you’ll be to trial… when?”

Here she huffed out her breath, an irritable burst that sent the strand of blonde hair fluttering. “They’ve filed a motion to dismiss. Lack of standing in the district court.”

“Will your case survive that?”

“Our case now. And I’m working on it. It would be great to get some help.”

“Seems like you have it well under control.”

It was not the opening salvo of a negotiation; it was a door slamming shut. And she knew it, from her expression. Her face went pale with anger, but she picked up the files from his desk, scrabbling to get her fingers under the heavy stack, and crossed the room to stand toe-to-toe with him. He silently deposited the rest of the files into her arms, and she left without saying a word.

\--------------

It took him three days to catch his mistake, and the only reason it didn’t take significantly longer was because he had the misfortune of receiving a check-in call from Pete.

“So, are you liking working with Jacqueline?” the man asked, after having exhausted all the usual pleasantries.

It took Gibbs a moment of running through any and all possible alternatives before he found himself able to make the connection to the woman who’d made herself at home in his office sanctuary. “Not particularly,” he answered honestly. Life was simpler when lies were kept to a minimum. And he had enough of those to maintain already.

Pete seemed unsurprised. “Give her a chance. You have some key qualities in common. Like, you’re both stubborn as hell. I’m not sure I’ll live to see the day that woman backs down.”

Gibbs murmured noncommittally and Pete saw the opportunity to extract himself from the conversation. It was only when the quiet had settled back on his office, that Gibbs finally realized he’d been played. And not by Pete.

He flung open his door and stood in the doorway, gaze cutting through the bustling office to the back desk, where a blond head was bent intently over her desk, highlighting an inch-thick stack of papers slotted meticulously into a three-ring binder. He couldn’t see her face.

For the space of a heartbeat, he saw himself crowding into her personal space and demanding answers for why she’d manipulated him off a case he hadn’t wanted to be on in the first place. In his imagination, he’s close enough to tip her chin up to make sure she looks him in the eye. In his imagination, her skin is soft under his rough fingers, her pulse thrumming just beneath as his teeth slip down her neck.

He slammed his door shut and locked it from the inside, then crossed the room to a locked safe, yanking it open to reveal a chilled metal canister. He didn’t usually drink at work. Today would have to be an exception. He sighed and took a long sip of O-Negative straight from the canister.

_Week Three_

It all boiled down to curiosity. Crass, mundane curiosity. He had thought he was above such banal emotions by this point in time.

Privately – he’d learned long ago that it was never worth it to lie to yourself – he could admit that it wasn’t that he’d been manipulated, but how easily she had managed it. Putting him on edge from the start with her over-familiarity in his own office sanctum, lugging along a heavy stack of papers to make the case seem more trouble than it was worth… 

And while he wasn’t lying to himself, he would also admit that he was intrigued by the simple fact that, for the first time in a century, there was a puzzle he didn’t immediately know the answer to.

_Week Four_

In the end, he might have waited out the curiosity. Waited until the passing weeks and months and years drained the color from the novelty, returning him to his world of grey shadows.

But as it was, it was a 5:30am arrival to the office one morning to find himself the second person to have arrived that pushed him over the edge. 

“Why do you care so much?” he demanded without heat.

It was not possible that she’d failed to hear him crossing the office, his long wool coat still radiating the cold of the chill morning outside, but she hadn’t looked up.

The rapid clacking of the keys paused as she met his eyes over her computer monitor, and he felt a spark of relief at the expression in her eyes. She wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Life is short,” she said simply.

The irony was not lost on him, but he took the bait, cocking his head to the side to indicate, if not true interest, at least a willingness to hear her out.

She smiled thinly, and he wondered suddenly, irrationally, if she could read his curiosity in his face. “Life is short,” she repeated. “People don’t have time to wait for the cosmos to right itself and justice to be done. I believe we have to take it for them.”

That wasn’t answer enough for him. “I fail to see how that is my responsibility.”

“I know,” she said, and it was clear that she considered that enough of a reason to coax him off her case. 

“Why did you become a lawyer?” She asked suddenly.

Why, indeed. Because the law changes more slowly than most other professions, and he was bone-tired of re-learning things. “For the money. For the game,” he shot back. Rhetoric, at least, had not gone out of style.

Not that this was rhetoric, per se… More like spiteful school room taunts.

“Me too.” She grinned suddenly, sharply, and then in a flash it was gone.

He blinked, and she returned to her work.

His eyes narrowed. “So it’s the winning that motivates you?” he asked.

Her fingers stalled over the keys but she didn’t look up. “Something like that.”

Unwilling to take the bait again, he changed tactics. “Where is the stack of files from before?”

She had the decency to look just the tiniest bit embarrassed. “All the files for this case are online.”

“What would you have done if I’d wanted to see the files when you brought them into my office?”

“But you didn’t.”

He wasn’t surprised when a paralegal brought him a thick stack of freshly-printed documents a few hours later, accompanied by a meticulous handwritten set of instructions, and signed simply, “ _Jack_.”


	3. Chapter 3

_Week Five_

It was insidious, at first. The first hint came when he read the first half of the plaintiff testimonies and had to put off the remainder for another day, the stories of pain, predation, and loss playing over and over in his head. The second was the sense of unease he felt whenever he stopped working on his half of the brief to focus on his other case – that was, beating Aloysius.

But the grand finale hit with her seated in one of his twin Queen Anne chairs, shoes kicked off and feet twisted up underneath her pressed right up against the original upholstery that dated back to 1724. It mattered less to him than he would have thought.

“Aha!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together once, hard, in a sort of victory, looking down at the mess of tax documents in her lap. “Maddox settled a libel case here in the City just three years ago!”

She looked up and beamed at him. Her point was clear – with proof that the defendants had accepted the District Court’s authority in a previous case, their barrier to proving standing had just gotten a whole lot easier to surpass – but the sudden sense of consternation he felt in that moment was inexplicable, and had more to do with how her eyes were sparkling. He hadn’t cared about anything that much in years. The flush that cut across his face was only partly jealousy.

“It’s the nail in the coffin,” she smiled, and the struggle to not wince at the analogy that was a bit too spot-on shifted him out of his momentary pique.

He had a sneaking suspicion his fascination with the case had more to do with her than the victims, no matter how tragic their situations might be. Did that make him a bad person?

As that line of inquiry permeated his consciousness, he froze, dropped his head back down to the case files in front of him. He hadn’t bothered with questions of morality for a long time.

\-----

She offered to treat him to dinner when they wrapped up for the evening – an off-the-cuff invitation that was so casual and natural that he half-imagined the mouth-watering scent of the steak he couldn’t have before he was able to bring himself to decline the offer.

He had never found himself to be an intuitive man by nature, but centuries of lived experience would bring at least a bit of introspection to anyone. And he could admit that now, the itching in his fingers to wrap his hands around her throat had less to do with her pulse and everything to do with the faint remains of a smile still on her lips as she stepped out for the night.

_Week Seven_

It was noon on a Thursday before he remembered that today was The Day.

That explained why she wasn’t in her desk that morning – she’d beaten him into the office every other day that week. He suddenly realized she hadn’t invited him to attend their preliminary hearing either, even though he’d pulled his weight and written half of the brief and was more invested than he should have been in convincing the judge to allow their case to stand.

Not that he would have attended the hearing even if she’d asked. Or that he wanted her to ask. But she hadn’t. Asked, that was.

His fingers twitched aside the heavy red curtains of the interior window that divided his office from the rest of the firm’s suite. She was still not back.

Bad or good? he wondered, then reminded himself he didn’t care.

He settled himself back into his chair, not bothering to

It was half past three in the afternoon before there was the faintest smattering of a courtesy knock on his office door. Before he had time to do more than look up, she'd invited herself into his office and was standing there before him, still dressed in a dark pant suit, cheeks flushed with victory, and eyes sparkling. Her momentum across his office stopped when her hands pressed up flat against the top of his desk, hips in contact with the front edge of the heavy desk as she leaned forward as if to speak.

In an instant, he realized a great many things.

First, that they’d clearly survived the motion to dismiss.

Second, that this fact mattered a great deal to him.

Third, that if he were maybe 500 years younger – and if she also weren’t human – and if there weren’t nearly so many people in the office – he might have caught his fingers up into the lapel of her jacket and pressed her up body up against his.

In the flicker of a second it took to process his thoughts, she’d caught the tension too. Her eyes narrowed and her lips, still parted in preparation to speak, slammed shut.

“Yes?” he asked flatly, and if his knuckles strained under the force with which he gripped the underside of his desk drawer, she’d never know.

He expected her to flush, to feel embarrassment at his obvious dismissal. To distance herself both physically and emotionally. But she only frowned, slightly, studying him.

“The judge denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss.”

“Congratulations.”

“I’ve got 3 paralegals out there prepping the filings so we can start discovery.”

It was an invitation, but phrased so he could ignore it. And so he did.

He sat back down behind his solid mahogany desk, uncapped a ballpoint pen, and turned his attention to polishing a particularly tricky argument he planned to deploy against Aloysius. His general sense of distraction only further irritated him.

\--------------

He overslept the next morning, for the first time in decades. The sun was already up, cutting through a few soft clouds that floated above the city. With sunlight that bright, there was no way he could make it into the office walking.

Sullen, he dressed for the day, then carefully pulled a set of long leather gloves onto his hands, smoothing the ends of the gloves with meticulous car into the sleeves of his woolen overcoat, then checked his pant legs to ensure they fully covered his ankles. Grabbing a black umbrella despite the sunshine, he stalked down to the front of his building, unfurled the umbrella, and hailed a cab.

Still stuck in traffic an hour later, his lips pressed tightly together as his gaze lingered on the piles of trash bags lined up alongside the street.

So, this stinking maze of concrete was the pride of modern humanity? “The City” indeed. He’d seen far, far too many civilizations rise and fall to give one bloated megalopolis such a dubious honor. Try Golden-Age Baghdad on for size. Or, frankly, any major Chinese city of the fifteenth century.

He carried that attitude with him into the office, storming into his back room so intently that startled interns had to dodge out of his way.

Stepping into his office, he turned to slam the door shut and his sense of self-control broke and his eyes angled over to her desk. Scribbling furiously, she wasn’t paying the least amount of attention.

He allowed himself the satisfaction of slamming the door, then, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

_Week_ _Eight_

The process of discovery was long and miserable. The defense had smothered them with tens of thousands of pages of records, clearly hoping to overwhelm them by sheer quantity.

Still preparing for his showdown with Aloysius – now just under three months away – Gibbs split his time between the two cases. It was undeniable and inevitable that the brunt of the work for their shared case fell on Jack, who could be found at all hours of the day and night at her desk in the back corner, madly typing or highlighting or cross-referencing.

He felt… guilty. And he didn’t like it.

It became easier and easier to avoid her during the workday. In part, it seemed she was avoiding him – forgoing the easy comfort that had existed between the two of them when she’d worked from his office.

He slacked off more and more on his share of the work, telling himself he didn’t have the time to spare for a _pro bono_ case when a victory against Aloysius was at stake, until he realized he was purposefully delaying in order to force her hand. Because at some point, she was bound to storm into his office to tell him off, eyes blazing and hips braced against the front of the desk as she crowded into his personal space, and maybe she would take matters into her own hands and reach across the desk and –

He cut himself off, abruptly.

Then he caught up on his share of the casework.


	4. Chapter 4

_Week_ _Ten_

They weren’t really speaking to each other now, and that was fine by him. Totally fine. Completely fine.

It was also why he was still ensconced in his office at the ripe hour of 1am. He used one finger to lift the corner of the curtain covering the interior office window.

He hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of slinking out of his office with her the only one there, witness to his cowardly silence. But the idea of wishing her goodnight when he hadn’t said a word to her all week that wasn’t directly case-related also stopped him up cold.

He cast a dubious look at the Queen Anne chairs. Could he see himself staying the night in the two of them pushed together?

The absurdity of what he was now seriously contemplating drew him up straight. With fastidious care, he donned his long wool coat and collected his cane, then firmly stepped out of his office, refusing to glance in her direction as he slipped away from the office.

Had he looked, he might have realized she was sound asleep, slumped forward against her desk and cheek pillowed on her crossed arms.

_Week_ _Eleven_

It was a Tuesday morning around 5:45am when she entered the office lobby just a few minutes after him, catching him in the elevator as they ascended.

“Good morning Jethro,” she said calmly, as if it weren’t the first pleasantry either of them had exchanged in nearly two weeks.

But he wasn’t about to quibble with a free reprieve. “Good morning,’” he returned.

“It’s deathly quiet this morning,” she noted, and he eyed her sideways – she didn’t know the half of how right she was. She did seem to have a knack for the most uncomfortable analogies.

Obligatory small talk concluded, she fell silent. He missed listening to her voice. He reminded himself again and again that distance was better. Distance would keep him sane. But distance was undone only minutes later, when she rushed back into his office, spitting mad, not bothering to knock.

“They got to the judge somehow, the bastards,” she hissed without context, “and they’ve sped up the trial. Opening arguments start in _eight_ weeks.”

“Can we be ready by then?” It was an honest question – distracted as he was by her anger and her beauty and the heady combination of the two – but she’d heard the ‘we’ as well and was as shocked as he was.

“Y-yes,” she said, her anger dissipated by sudden surprise. She looked at him for another beat, “We’ll make it happen,” she said finally, resolutely, slowly breaking into a bright smile that punched a hot spike straight though his groin.

It was only after she left that he realized he was double-scheduled for his showdown with Aloysius.

_Week_ _Twelve_

Somehow, a week had passed and he still hadn’t told her that he was going to have to skip the trial. He thought about it sometimes on his walk home, with the streetlamps shining down on cracked and filthy sidewalks, as he wove through the narrow back allies that were not much younger than him

And he thought about it during the day, sometimes, when he peered through the window to see her at her desk, chewing on the tip of a pen, hair twisted up in a casual bun that had partially fallen down.

But when he finally told her, she didn’t even seem angry. Or surprised. And he realized he might rather her be angry.

“Can’t you delay your anti-trust case?” she had asked him.

_Unspoken: Surely a corporation can afford this delay more than our mutual clients._

He shook his head. “The Judge assigned to this case has a tremendous backlog. If our trial gets pushed back, our court date will be delayed at least another six months.”

_Unspoken: A delay would push the case into the heart of July, when 16 hours of sunlight a day would make getting into the courthouse an uncomfortable and perilous journey._

Also unspoken:

_I have my priority. And this case isn’t it._

“I’ll do as much as I can to support you in advance,” he promised, wincing internally but unable to rationalize himself out of the offer.

She took him up on it, with a wicked gleam in her eye that he first thought he had only imagined.

_W_ _eek_ _Fifteen_

He had started to lose track of his days. Even creatures like him needed to sleep sometime. And in his sleep, he saw case files.

Nevertheless, her relentless energy propelled him forward.

At some point, she found her way back to her favorite chair in his office. From that moment on, she was everywhere:

In the single long blonde hair he pulled off his wool overcoat.

In his head.

And, once, in a dream so vivid that he couldn’t meet her eyes the entire next morning.

_Week Seventeen_

He particularly liked her hair, he decided.

(He tried to dismiss the fragments from his dream the previous week, in which her hair had featured prominently.)

Maybe because it was just short enough to catch in the hollow of her collarbone, covering where her pulse certainly beat just underneath the fragile skin of her throat. See, that was the issue. Humans were, all of them, far too fragile.

But this human was staring at him like she expected an answer, so he mentally pried his gaze off her hair and up to her face.

“Well?” she asked.

“What?” he admitted.

She rolled her eyes, braced up with one hand against the edge of the door, and shook her head like he had made a lame joke. “So it’s settled,” she said then, dropping a quick smile then walking away.

He hoped it wasn’t something too inconvenient that he’d just agreed to.

\----

Frowning, she chewed on the end of her pen. “The defendants’ lawyers want to meet next week. To ‘discuss’” – she offered air quotes around the word – “the case.”

“You think they want to settle?” he asked.

“Well… no,” she admitted, skeptically. “Do you?”

He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.” And then he stopped, wondering when he’d become the more optimistic of the two.


End file.
